> Why not run a fully updated centos-4? > > > The system contains a 2.3 TB RAID 5 array. There is a 20GB root > > partition with the remainder of the drive configured one large LVM > > volume. (/u0) ... > > I cannot do any of the following to the backup file: Use cat, dd or cp > > to copy the file. The first part of the file aproximately 24MB will > > copy and then I get the error message: Input/output error > > Booting from it implies that you have a "normal" partition table on the > 2.3T device, this does not work (dos style MBRs only works with <2T). > Most people boot from a small and independent device and uses gpt (see > parted) on the big device or no table at all (lvm directly on the > device). > Hi Peter, I took your advice. I upgraded to CentOS 4.4 and then further upgraded the kernel to the official 2.6.18 kernel. I installed a basic IDE drive and did the OS load on to that drive. The remaining disks were resetup using hardware RAID 5 and LVM was setup directly on the device (no partitions). Also to avoid any issues with large file systems and EXT3 I setup and formatted the LVM with JFS. It's worth noting that a mkfs.jfs on 2.3TB took about 10 seconds! For some odd reason the CentOS kernel doesn't support JFS so a recompile was in order. Downloading and installing jfsutils was trivial. Try as I might, I have not yet been able to reproduce the problems that caused me stress. I can create multi GB files without a problem. I can move files into and out of the partition without an error. I'm taking this as a good sign. I'm also not seeing any disk access errors in dmesg! Shawn